Lighter Shade Of Pale
by Shawne
Summary: 'I don't need to count my blessings,' she declares proudly, defiantly, 'I'm not going to die.' But the shadow in the shape of a man moves, the sand curls around him...


Title: Lighter Shade Of Pale  
Author: Shawne  
E-Mail: [shawne@shawnex.freeservers.com][1]  
URL: [http://www.shawnex.freeservers.com][2]  
Rating: PG-13 for disturbing themes  
Category: VA  
Spoilers: post-ep "Tithonus", Redux II mention  
Keywords: M/S DAL  
Summary: 'I don't need to count my blessings,' she declares proudly,  
defiantly, 'I'm not going to die.' But the shadow in the shape of a man  
moves, the sand curls around him...  
Archive: I love visiting my little fic-children when they're released to the  
world at large, so please let me know where this ends up. ;)  
Disclaimers: If Mulder and Scully were mine, they'd be over here right now,  
enacting the whole of Season Seven for me. But since I *don't* own them  
(dammit!), I've got to rely on my slightly rusty memory and produce post-ep  
fics for somewhat ancient episodes. siiiigh  
  
Author's Notes: To Dreamshaper, CazQ and bugs for the amazing betas,  
especially in the face of the little war I declared on punctuation. eg  
Huge thanks for the much-needed encouragement on what was essentially a big  
experiment in style for me, for the thwapping and yelling and whip-cracking  
that always makes me feel so loved... and most of all, for always believing  
that I have a story to tell. :)  
  
Thanks also to Shannon, for very neatly averting beta-reading Armageddon (in  
the space of a few minutes, no less!), and to Piper, for letting me whine  
and then telling me to shut up.  
  
======================================================  
  
She stands in the eye of a hurricane of sand, watching it rise and spin and  
fall, fiercely, giddily, painfully. It's almost beautiful, but she shields  
her eyes from the raging mist. She cannot bear to look; her eyes are already  
tearing.  
  
What he said was wrong -- he was only scaring her, telling her lies he knew  
would affect her. He wanted her to drop her guard, to lose her self-control.  
  
And still the sand whirls arounds her, swooping, dipping, forcing her to  
hide her face... but she is one second too late.  
  
A wall of light crashes through the gritty barrier of sand, then it melts,  
collapses onto itself, fading in, out... becoming the midnight-coloured  
shape of a man. It's Mulder, her mind whispers, isn't it? He will come, and  
he will believe like he always does, and she can be doubtful again.  
  
Oh, but the light is burning her eyes... how can one think when it is so  
bright? So bright, so glaring, so she doesn't think anymore. She can't.  
  
It is mere seconds before the sand whips itself back into a funnel,  
churning around, in her; she barely notices her body, her arms, her legs.  
She is immaterial.  
  
'I don't need to count my blessings,' she declares proudly, defiantly, 'I'm  
not going to die.' But the shadow in the shape of a man moves, the sand  
curls around him...  
  
He explodes into her, shards of sharp white-hot light stabbing through her  
every muscle, nerve, thought. She feels whatever supports her - her legs? -  
slip, and cries against the thundering pain that shudders through her, comes  
to rest, coagulates, in the pit of her stomach. She falls, and it is slow,  
pained, graceful, like the passage of a swan crossing a near-frozen lake in  
the dead of ebony winter.  
  
It must be centuries, or may be only seconds, before she really, really  
feels her body again, solid, encasing her bones, the flesh clinging so  
tightly to her skeleton that it begins to hurt.  
  
She drops onto burning, yielding sand, slides on it, tries to grab a  
handful, a handhold, fails. Her legs - they are legs after all, then - fold  
beneath her, clammy cold skin meeting burning, yielding sand. The grains  
burrow into her, like moles channelling their way through earth -- she is  
sinking.  
  
The soundless cacophony of dust swirling around her suddenly stops, frozen,  
still. She watches the walls around her in fear: are they closing in? Why  
can't she breathe, why does it hurt? She struggles against the sword of  
flame slicing through her abdomen, draws in a torturous gasp of air, chokes  
on it, for it becomes tangible in her throat, a rocky lump she can't swallow  
past.  
  
'I'm dying,' she shouts, but no one hears.  
  
The walls of relentless sand shiver, hover in the air around her, real and  
yet fantastical... maybe her eyes can see through them. She strains, trying  
to collect her scattered thoughts. But three of the walls, in front, behind,  
on her left, begin to melt, dip, fade into nothingness. The one on her right  
shimmers, flickers, coalesces into a moving, living skeleton.  
  
She almost screams, almost shuffles back, but finds that she cannot make a  
noise, cannot move. She is chained to the ground, pinned to the air around  
her by the wound in her body, the body that is still tightening, becoming  
more compact and concentrating the pain, the ache, the intolerable heat.  
  
Fear, her mind whispers, irrational fear. But the sight of the skeleton,  
creamy-white skull, dark caverns watching her over a double row of tiny  
marbled gravestones... fear, I'm afraid, I'm going to die!  
  
She coughs again, tasting salty-sweet blood, feeling more pulse up through  
her veins, her neck, ebbing and spreading into her mouth. The metallic burn  
of the blood against her lips matches the poker-hot lashing against her  
heart, as if someone is whipping this errant piece of meat into submission,  
curling a thick metal chain around it, snapping and then tightening it.  
  
Pain.  
  
The skeleton next to her, not hers, _can't_ be hers, she isn't meant to die  
today!, reaches for her with bones, only bones. Then the gravestones fall  
open, and it speaks. 'Do you see him? Do you see him?' The words echo in her  
ears, and her eyes slide half-shut, cutting off the garish sight, its  
mocking screech.  
  
No, I don't want to, a voice in the left side of her head protests. Yes, I  
do, the right side retaliates, and the conflicting urges mix with her  
unvoiced fear that she is dying, her worry that Mulder will never know she  
is lying here in the sand with a skeleton telling her not to look - look at  
what? Her eyes open, because she must know, *should* know what is killing  
her. What it looks like, why someone... why Fellig could have spent years,  
decades, chasing, hunting it.  
  
Don't look! Close your eyes! the command shoots through her brain,  
reverberating, and she is defiant at first. Why, she wants to know, why  
close what is meant to be opened? She cracks her fever-dried lips to  
protest, ignoring the blood, crimson-red and sweet (she is growing  
accustomed to its taste), as it dribbles down her chin.  
  
Close them, comes the command again. Don't look!  
  
Why? she wants to ask, feeling the lids of her eyes sink, grow heavy, like  
a down blanket, like another person holding her close. Her hand, it is a  
part of her body after all, and someone else's hand is covering it, strong  
and firm, relentless. The hand is talking to hers, syllables slipping  
through skin, saying the same thing: close your eyes -- don't look. It must  
be a conspiracy... everyone wants her to close her eyes, but why?  
  
Because you are not meant to die today, the hand whispers, and the fear  
bubbling in her stomach comes to the boil, weaving itself into the pain. She  
can feel the flesh of the hand lying on top of hers softening, first into a  
mass of jelly, then evaporating into the stiff, unyielding hand of Death.  
She tries to focus, wants so much to see... but he is tricking her; it's not  
the skeleton. It's only an old man, a man so old he could try to capture  
Death.  
  
He was the one who told her to count her blessings, told her she was  
*lucky*, it was him. He'd said she was going to die, wanted her to die, was  
almost happy that he would be alive when she wouldn't, happy for all the  
wrong reasons.  
  
She wants to strike out at him, he has killed her, he must have, but  
watches in suspended horror as his face begins to tremble, melt, fade into  
nothing. He is disappearing, disintegrating, dying before her eyes! His skin  
is burning... and there is something, something flitting around the room,  
just out of the corner of her eye, she can almost see the shadow as it  
hisses past.  
  
But it is too terrible, the sight of him imploding on himself, terrible.  
Close your eyes! the command tears again through her mind, is issued by her  
mind, resonant, compelling, and this time she no longer has the strength,  
the courage, to disobey.  
  
She closes her eyes, watching the shadows of light chase themselves across  
the dark blackness of her mind. In the split second that follows, she tastes  
blood, sand, feels coarse grains settle around and in her, comes too near to  
the elusive shadow, feels the skeleton's hand tighten around hers... and  
then the fire in her side leaps, and she gasps, and the stark night claims  
her for itself.  
  
%%%  
  
Darkness.  
  
She is swimming in darkness, upwards, pushing against the weight of the  
thick black water, wanting so much to breathe. Through the dark oppressive  
silence, she hears the airy notes of a long-forgotten song in her head, and  
maybe it guides her upwards, up, up, and she just barely breaks the surface,  
flailing, gasping for air, for light, for life or anything, anything at all.  
  
Don't move, the gentle words play to the tune in her head, don't be scared.  
You're safe.  
  
I am? she asks, or maybe she doesn't, there are strong arms holding her  
down, pressing her against softness. She feels someone's efficient hands  
tuck warmth firmly around her tired, sore body.  
  
The whisper comes to her as in a dream: go to sleep, you're safe, you're  
alive. How good to know that! And yet... she lifts her head, struggles  
against the suffocating iron belt she is wearing, the iron belt that eats  
into her movements, enslaves her, marks her for sleep. 'I can't move,' she  
whimpers, afraid, and peels her eyes open with the greatest of efforts.  
  
Colour explodes before them, a blinding swarm of blue and red and green,  
yellow and purple, churning, swelling, and she blinks once, twice, thrice,  
against the brightness. White, she reassures herself that everything is  
really a cool comforting white, and white is real, she decides. It means she  
is alive, colour is elusive, transient, but she sees only white here.  
  
Why is everything white?  
  
Don't ask questions, another voice slips into her, like a wave through the  
ocean, you should rest. Sleep, be well.  
  
'But I can't rest, I shouldn't,' she protests, 'I'm on assignment!' She  
twists half around in her cotton prison, chained to a unyielding lump of  
soft feathers, and she wonders dully why there is a hole right through her.  
She can't see anything beyond the white, and she cannot recall what  
happened, all that is black. But she *does* know there is a hole somewhere  
inside her, clean, thorough, piercing.  
  
The assignment is over, and you must rest! the voice insists. Aren't you  
tired?  
  
Yes, yes, she agrees, I am. But why is there a hole in me... and now that  
the memories are returning, tumbling back, where is the man? Where is  
Fellig?  
  
Still, lie still, she is told. But she doesn't want to! She struggles  
helplessly against the warmth strapping her arms and legs down, even as  
those limbs grow heavy, like bricks... thick, like wood... sleepy, like her  
eyes.  
  
She wants to say she doesn't need sleep, wants answers, but the soft white  
cloud she is lying on refuses to cooperate, to wait for her to begin.  
Suddenly, it detaches itself from the ground, spins slowly up into the white  
white sky, and she watches as it turns a chilling black...  
  
Before she knows it, she hears someone's quiet sobbing, and she stiffens.  
Is she the one crying? She never cries, hates it, thinks it weak, especially  
in public. She is strong, and it would be awful if... no, it is not her,  
there are no sticky trails of moisture on her face, her face is cool, dry.  
Not her, but she recognises this sound, has heard it before through this  
same cloying haze lingering around her senses, and she wants to reach out to  
silence it, to comfort, to reassure.  
  
I'm fine, she tries to say, but her lips are welded shut, her eyes screwed  
tight against all her efforts. Mom, mom, don't cry. Not for me, I'm alive,  
I'm still alive, it's not the cancer. I'm not Melissa. Not dead. Not  
Melissa, alive.  
  
But no one can hear any of it, she is only half-conscious, reacting to  
sounds so wrenching, sensing worry so strong, that it penetrates even the  
foggy balm of sleep.  
  
Her sleep is too deep, too powerful, and already it is reclaiming her,  
drawing her back into its deepest and most comfortable folds, its oblivion,  
its soothing complete warmth. She wants to tell her mother not to worry, but  
already her tongue grows, thickens, fills her mouth, her mind's whispers die  
down, the black, the black returns, and she sinks back into it.  
  
Maybe an eternity passes, or maybe just one night, but moments crystallise,  
then shatter, and is it her imagination or a dream? There is the skeleton  
again, chanting its mournful dirge: do you see him? Do you see him? Don't  
look, close your eyes, close your eyes, close your eyes.  
  
It stands, shakes, bones rattled by the wind of sand whipping around them  
both, and she shrinks away in disgust. 'Don't come near me, I'm _alive_,'  
she hisses, backing off, adding as much distance as possible to the stretch  
of desert between them.  
  
The skeleton's midnight-deep caves, set deep in its smooth white skull,  
suddenly snap into life, glow bright red, and she screams, thrashes about,  
go away, I'm safe now! Her throat is torn and scratched, bleeding raw, the  
words lingering, clinging to the tender walls, and she turns, wants to run,  
but cannot, trapped by warmth, body immobilised, paralysed.  
  
'No no no,' she mutters aloud. She cannot turn away from the sight of the  
skeletal frame swaying towards her, watches in horror, pain, fear,  
transfixed as it extends a thin bony finger in her direction. 'No no no,'  
she chants, 'safe, alive, not Melissa, safe, alive'... but she cannot  
convince herself, not as the finger draws nearer, points straight at her,  
catches fire and burns brilliantly.  
  
Bone, bone can't burn like that, she tells herself desperately. This is a  
dream, and bone can't burn! But the finger draws so near to her face she can  
feel the flame jump against her skin, feel the heat as it shivers through  
the air and into her flesh, straight down through her body, to her toes,  
spreading, so so hot.  
  
She continues to watch the finger of flame in awed fear, wondering where it  
will strike, what will happen, how she will die for the second time. It  
seems inevitable, necessary, fate, when the finger, Fellig's finger, plunges  
into her stomach, blazing a hole clean through to the other side. She chokes  
around the pain, feels her flesh tense around the wound, even as the fire  
licks at her blood, flows into it, becomes it.  
  
So much pain it hurts to think, and she is still looking, terrified, into  
the deep glowing wells embedded in the skull, falling away into nothingness,  
into forever. Such a fearsome, horrible sight, and she forcibly pulls at  
herself, scrabbles against the sand that quakes and jolts beneath her feet.  
Get up! she pushes, pinches, nudges at her mind, don't look! don't look!  
  
"Don't look at what?"  
  
She pauses, surprised, and the fire in her stomach suddenly dampens down,  
until it's just a glowing ember, occasionally sparking to life. Who asked  
that question? Did she? She waits tentatively in the darkness, pleased to  
realise that the nightmare has been vanquished, has vanished, but she still  
has no idea who - what? - saved her.  
  
"Are you awake?" The words, deep golden honey, wrap around her, warm,  
thick, sun, and she delights in them, like a cat arching its back in the  
dappled yellow light streaming through a window.  
  
Slowly, she pushes one eye open, is greeted by a canvas of white, and  
decides it is safe to open the other. The light blurs, the shadows fade,  
then darken at the edges, sharpen into recognisable shapes, into objects,  
and there he is.  
  
He's sitting by her bedside, and she is in a hospital, waist firmly  
bandaged, blanket tucked tightly around her, trapped by all the white. It is  
him, he has found her, and it is awfully warm here, turning dim like the  
inside of a church, but he's here.  
  
"You shouldn't be here," she blurts out loud, "why are you here?", and she  
almost hits herself for asking such a stupid question first. Why not 'thank  
you for being here' or 'I was so afraid' or 'I love you'? Why never the  
_truth_, her tongue must hate the truth, and the moment, the chance to say  
so much more, is gone again... and she must watch it go as she has all the  
others.  
  
"I _have_ to be here," he whispers, and drops a warm, gentle hand on her  
cool, dry forehead. She allows him to smooth her hair, push it gently off  
her face, his hand dips to follow the curve of her cheek, and it is warm, so  
warm that she can feel the world stop spinning, the sand is disappearing  
quickly, fading to white. She is on solid ground again.  
  
She is beginning to remember what happened, the skeleton, the man, the  
nightmares, the brief dream-like moments of consciousness, and she is too  
glad that he is here, too glad to push him away, to turn her back on his  
concern like she would normally do.  
  
I am strong, alive, safe, she tells herself, but maybe that is not always  
good enough.  
  
She takes his big hand in hers, feels his warm flesh against hers, solid,  
not dissolving, and squeezes it, feeling his heartbeat through the thin  
barriers of skin separating them. "Thank you," she says, and turns her head  
to the side before he can see the liquid crystal that has formed in her  
eyes, is poised to fall onto her eyelashes.  
  
She blinks it away, she is strong and does not cry in front of others, but  
she is also so tired, so sleepy, so lost, and feels her heart constrict in  
fear when he speaks again. "Close your eyes." She wants to protest, saying  
that it will all happen again, exactly as it did before, the sand, the  
skeleton, the man, the bony hand, and she can't face up to it, she is  
strong, but not that strong, and...  
  
But then he repeats himself. "Close your eyes," he says, his hand gripping  
hers tightly, not going to let go, squeezing back, "Rest. I'll be here." His  
other hand traces the length of her arm, slips whisper-soft across her neck,  
and two fingers gently kiss her cheekbone. "I'll be here."  
  
He'll be here, her mind echoes in a singsong, he, Mulder will be here, and  
this bed is soft, so soft, and her eyes are losing the will, the ability to  
stay focused, open. He'll be here, she can close her eyes, maybe one day she  
can tell him why he shouldn't look, but he'll be here, because she can feel  
warmth - his warmth - flowing through her.  
  
Her eyes blur, colours merging, fading into a brilliant sharp white light,  
eyelids flicker, he's here, he'll be here, and maybe that makes sleep  
possible, desirable... maybe that even makes it good enough.  
  
======================================================  
  
Feedback is like a cashew nut, because... um, because... thinking I'll  
have to get back to you on that. g In the meantime, talk to me at  
[shawne@shawnex.freeservers.com][1]. :)  
  
Added April 12, 2000

   [1]: mailto:shawne@shawnex.freeservers.com
   [2]: http://www.shawnex.freeservers.com



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